Sow It Goes
Stories shape us. Conversations connect us. Ideas plant the seeds for change. That’s what Sow It Goes is all about. This conversational podcast explores the journeys of diverse individuals—from artists and scientists to entrepreneurs, athletes, and everyday people. The title plays on the idea that growth, much like life, isn’t always linear; it’s messy, unexpected, and full of twists. The podcast's tagline, "Great things grow from small beginnings," reflects the belief that every success, no matter how big, started from somewhere small, often unnoticed, or unplanned. Welcome to Sow It Goes!
Sow It Goes
Behind Ballet's Curtain: From Struggling Student to Principal Dancer
A captivating conversation with Alexander Jones unfolds as he shares his transformative journey from a reluctant ballet student to a principal dancer. We explore the trials of rigorous training, the emotional complexities dancers face, and the importance of resilience in pursuit of one’s passion.
• From early reluctance in ballet to passionate involvement
• The pressure of rigorous training in prestigious ballet schools
• Moments of self-doubt and overcoming personal challenges
• The fine line between artistry and athleticism in dance
• Navigating career progression and the realities of professional ballet
• Preparing for life after dance and embracing future possibilities
Tune in for an enlightening discussion that resonates beyond the ballet world—subscribe, share, and join the conversation on navigating life’s intricate ballet!
Your career is dependent on one person's opinion of you. It wasn't that I was passionate about ballet. I hardly ever got to see my parents. We were working three floors underground.
Speaker 2:No daylights.
Speaker 1:No daylights, no daylights.
Speaker 2:Initially, you didn't really have a choice. How did you learn to love this art form?
Speaker 1:Where to start with that question.
Speaker 2:Welcome to so it Goes, the podcast where we explore how great things grow from small beginnings. Alexander Jones, you've devoted your life to an art form that pushes the boundaries of human ability, one that requires extraordinary talent, relentless discipline and the kind of mental and physical strength few can fathom. As a principal dancer, you've risen to the pinnacle of what is often described as one of the most grueling and unforgiving professions ballet. What drew you into this world?
Speaker 1:Where to start with that question. What drew me into the world? I don't think it was intentional whatsoever. I think for a lot of boys in ballet not always, but in my case definitely, and in a lot of cases there's a sister story. So my sister started dancing years before I did. I was always encouraged to do a lot of different sports, by my mom in particular, and pushed to do a lot of sports, and I think the dance came in because my sister was starting to be bullied in the local dance school and they asked me if I would take her in, I think not just from the car but also into the studio. I think they found her one day crying in the bathroom and she hadn't managed to get herself into the studio. So Big Brother went into the studio with her and from what I know because I really don't remember, actually the first class I did was a tap class and like any little boy that enters into, it was a musical theatre school more than a ballet school, but they did everything. I quickly joined, you know, the acting and singing class and then the modern class, and ballet was the last thing that I did. And I did ask my mum Apparently. She told me that my answer was just so long as I don't have to wear a tutu, I'm okay with doing ballet. I don't remember that, but she told me that I said that, so, which seems like quite a funny thing to say already at that age for a little boy. But I think I wasn't that young.
Speaker 1:Probably I was towards the end of nine years old, because shortly after starting ballet I think I've been doing it about six months the ballet teacher wanted to take me to a dance festival in London and there was another little boy there that was going to the Royal Ballet School, jack Jones, same surname, and I happened to do well in, I think it was the London Ballet Festival Awards and his mum came to my ballet teacher and mum and said is your son also going to the Royal Ballet School? And my mum had no idea what the Royal Ballet School was, but my teacher obviously knew and had been to the Royal Ballet School herself. Um, so yeah, we were very lucky that Jack Jones's mom was there and kind of gave us a telephone number and said you should really call the school. And we did and we explained what had happened at the ballet festival and they said well, you better bring him up right away. And it was all really by chance.
Speaker 1:And I think for my parents, the fact that things worked out this way for them. Really they were not in a very good financial situation at the time, in the late, the early 90s, let's say. My dad went completely bankrupt. They lost all their assets and I think for them they just thought. When I got offered a place at the school, they just thought look, whether he comes out as a dancer or not, at least from 11 to 16, he's going to be in a privileged environment, small classes, good education, and then at 16 years old he can go on to a good college or whatever else he wants to do. Right, um.
Speaker 1:But lo and behold, I did the full eight years at the Royal Bali school, five years at the lower school in Surrey and Richmond park, which is, um, yeah, it's a leased school by the. It's leased by the Royal family to the Royal Bali school. Um, it's a wonderful place. But after five years in there in a boarding school, you know you feel like you're getting out of prison at the end of it. Um.
Speaker 1:And then I did three years in the upper school in Covent Garden um, before joining my first ballet company and I really struggled. First two years I really struggled um. Pretty much every other day I would have a little bit of a shutdown internal shutdown where I would turn away, um, face the bar, put my little blue towel on the bar, put my head down on the table uh, sorry, on the bar. And when that would happen it was like, okay, that's it, you're not going to get anything more from me today within this training. You know um? And then, when the class was over, I'd leave the training, I'd have academics and I go to academics and I get on with my day like nothing had happened.
Speaker 1:But I think there was this sense of um not feeling good enough, not feeling good enough to be there. Um, one of my friends I mean we're all today, all those people I went to school with are like brothers to me, um, it's the yeah, they're my family, they know me as well, if not better, than my own family, and we're all very honest with each other. And uh, one of my friends said to me you were definitely the worst in the class, um, and the nice thing is, yeah, I mean, there was a lot of sacrifice and there was a lot of um, struggle, um, but in the end, yeah I, I came out towards the top of the class and went on to have a wonderful career. But I think it really forced me to be confronted with a lot of family things, shame things with my parents' financial situation. My dad had committed fraud to try and save our home. I'd gone to prison for a couple of years just before I'd gone to the Royal Ballet School, which was something I could, for a long time, not share with any of my friends. So there was a lot of things going on underneath during that time of training and I hardly ever got to see my parents.
Speaker 1:And I don't want to make it sound like it's a sad story, because it's really not. You know, I was definitely better in the school environment than I was at home, but when you're an 11-year-old kid, you don't know that right. I mean, there's still this sense of abandonment and being sent to a school just to get on with things and my parents just thought, okay, that's one child taken care of, in a way, and they had three more kids at home, so there wasn't a choice in it. At the same time, at 11 years old, I don't think any child really knows what they want to do. Right, of course we can show an interest in a certain thing and then the parents allow us to go into that direction. But I think in my case it wasn't that I was passionate about ballet.
Speaker 2:I became passionate let's say obsessive about ballet how did you learn to love this art form when, initially, you didn't really have a choice and you mentioned that sometimes you were completely shut down?
Speaker 1:yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think it's like anything that when you start to get good at something and you see your personal improvement in something, then you know it can be anything you like. If you feel yourself getting better, you you start to enjoy it right, and that's why it's so important to start somewhere for anyone out there that wants to learn something. The chances are in the beginning it's going to be very frustrating and it's going to be very monotonous and it's going to take a lot of patience. But I think you know, if you apply kind of manage to apply yourself for a year, say two years probably to something and you start to see the improvements and the benefits, that's when we can start to enjoy it. So definitely, I think the change for me was maybe in my second year at the school and I saw grades improving and we were often taken to the Royal Ballet and we got to see performances of our, of our generation and I think every male dancer looks up to him, as you know an example of really a wonderful, virtuoso, fabulous, charismatic dancer. And when you see those sorts of people on stage and you realize the athleticism involved, um, I think for me it was very much about the athletic side for a long time and the artist artistry definitely came later.
Speaker 1:But maybe there was the artistry always there, underlying because of the struggle right, and not just, like I say, the struggle with the training itself, but the family background and the struggle of my upbringing, my parents, my mum's childhood in particular, being an athlete. She was at 16, offered to play netball for England and at the time sports world was not recognised as any sort of occupation or job. You couldn't earn money being a netball player, so her parents didn't allow her to go and insisted that she stayed in school, which was a non-starter for my mum. She would always, you know, miss school, play tennis, I don't know do all of the, all of the sporting activities she would want to do. So she didn't get to live that dream for herself. So I think she somewhat that's why she pushed me so much to do many sports and somewhat wanted to live her dream, maybe through me, which also was a lot of pressure.
Speaker 2:So you joined the Royal Ballet School not really knowing if you were going to end up dancing professionally, but then you obviously did. How is one prepared for a ballet career? What is the training like?
Speaker 1:I think every day there's a good four hours of dance training. Um, I seem to remember classes where ballet class would happen every day, six days a week, and it depended on when your academics were. So in the first year, I think, ballet class was at eight o'clock, 8, 30 in the, and it might have even been two hours, possibly two hours an hour and 45 minutes. Especially when we were younger it was definitely longer, and then you would have academics in between for two hours. Lunch break, academics again, and then later in the afternoon you'd have in the Royal Ballet School. They integrated things like Scottish Irish Morris dancing was actually in the first year. So Morris dancing is a very traditional English form of dancing where you have handkerchiefs and kind of these metal sword things and you create shapes with the handkerchiefs or with the swords and it's a very um, old school type of dancing, uh, and then late in the later years you have tap dance and contemporary dance, different types of contemporary dance, integrated into the training as well.
Speaker 1:Martha Graham, cunningham Technique yeah, but really most of your, yeah, I think, time for yourself during the day you really have maybe lunchtime which is one hour, and then you have in between, say, six o'clock and 8.15, you would have dinner, but you'd also have time to maybe go and play a bit of football or I don't know to mess around in the dormitories and then at 8.15 till 9.15, or was it 7.15 till 8.15? I don't remember, but a long time ago now we would even have homework hour, like it was like an hour to do our homework, where we go back to the classrooms and do. I think it was called prep time for the next day. So most of your day is filled with ballet training and academics. There's very little time for you to be a kid, for you to be a child.
Speaker 2:How do you even find a job as a dancer? What happens once you graduate?
Speaker 1:In my graduating year I was very fortunate to be offered many jobs with different companies. I think I could have potentially gone to seven different companies, but the one job I didn't get was the Royal Ballet, and pretty much from 16 until 18, the school ended at 19, I somewhat I assumed, because the teachers kind of indicated that I would I was on the path for going to the Royal Ballet.
Speaker 2:In London In.
Speaker 1:London, yeah, yeah, and for whatever reason, I didn't get offered a job. And then you have to go around and you have to audition at other companies. And for me, I always knew I didn't want to stay in England if it wasn't the Royal Ballet, I didn't want to go to English National Ballet, I didn't want to go to Birmingham Royal Ballet, I wanted to have my experience somewhere else in the world. It could have been the States and it turned out to be Europe. So I did quite a few auditions but I was also offered jobs just by being put up front in performances.
Speaker 1:And Stuttgart Ballet was really my decision because when I sat down with the director after the audition he said I can see you being. I think he really said I can see you being a principal dancer at this company. You're tall, you're a good partner and that was an easy enough decision for me. You know, if a director sits opposite me and tells me I don't know when, I don't know how fast, but I can see you being a principal dancer at this company, decision made, his company decision made, honestly, yeah, I'm forever grateful to him because, um, I also. I wasn't the easiest to work with um. Again it again, it comes back to that thing of uh, feeling good enough, accepting yourself, um, accepting what you see like your qualities, like being able to appreciate what you have and not being too hard on yourself about the things that you don't have.
Speaker 1:These internal shutdowns that I spoke about, that would happen in my first few years in school and then, I would say, in the third, fourth year, because of the support of a particular teacher, at least the rate that they would happen definitely changed and they wouldn't happen in the same form. But what did happen was certainly in my early myself. It would come out in a more only to ever towards myself, but in a more physical way and I would maybe be like hitting down on the bar or like hitting myself, like I can't do it. Um, one ballet master in particular, today we should call them rehearsal directors.
Speaker 1:A rehearsal director is somebody that works with you on the choreography to tell us what looks good. Director is somebody that works with you on the choreography to tell us what looks good, what could be better. And again, it was the support of of somebody really sticking with me and allowing me to have those sort of emotional outbursts actually, and that's also something which for many years. You know, I would observe different rehearsal directors and some were really good at giving functional, constructive feedback and others were terrible at it. And you would really see the difference in in dancers how they would perform and how they would work with a ballet master, depending on how good the ballet master was at giving feedback. And sometimes a ballet master would give feedback in very brutal, critical, dysfunctional ways.
Speaker 2:Do you have an?
Speaker 1:example I won't give a particular example, but it's the attitude that it's done with and I would see it sometimes with younger dancers and I would feel myself watching it and being emotionally pulled in and thinking do they know how that might affect that person today and for the rest of the day and for the rest of the week and maybe even throughout their career?
Speaker 1:Um, and it's such a fine line because the ballet master has such oh sorry rehearsal director has such a responsibility, um, for sometimes 40 people in the room to make sure everyone's doing the steps right. And if they feel for one moment, you know that it's third, fourth, fifth, or they've been doing multiple rehearsals and that person isn't falling in line because in some cases it really is like being very regimented and it is like being in some sort of um, military environment or something. So, yeah, everybody needs to do their part and sometimes the rehearsal director would have a good point and other times it would just be that they're overtired, they're stressed, they're frustrated, they have too much work and one dancer just gets the wrong end of the stick. You know, they get, they get the bad moment and it can yeah, it can affect them if we take a step back.
Speaker 2:If you had to give a job description, ballet dancer yeah, what would it say in that job description what does your day-to-day life look like, what? What is your job, what? What do you have to do?
Speaker 1:of course there is, you know, the ability, first of all, to be able to do just all the steps, all the terminology, all the different things, all the requirements. Like there's that right, and that alone takes so many years of dedication because you're shaping your body in a way which it's not naturally born and shaped to do um, and there is a healthy way to do it. But that takes time and you need to do it slowly and over the years you can slowly change, maybe, the shapes of the hips and, yeah, um. So there's that side of it, there's the physical side of it, and then there is the mental side of it, from the point of view of dedication, commitment, sacrifice, struggle, all of those things. But there's also the mental side of it of how good are you at managing people Like, how good are you at managing people? Like, how good are you at maintaining friendships, at getting the support you need from the people around you? And if you're not good at that, it can be an extremely lonely career, especially as a principal dancer or a soloist dancer, and I would say even as a quarter ballet dancer, if you don't find it easy to maintain relationships. And if you aren't find it easy to maintain relationships and if you aren't able to be good with yourself so that you can be good with others, it's a really hard career. Um, I think I was always very, very fortunate to have a really good support system around me.
Speaker 1:Um, before we started, I spoke about being in a relationship with an Italian girl, alessandro Tognoloni. She's now principal dancer in Monte Carlo. I mean, she was without her throughout the first part, first 10 years of my career, I think I wouldn't have eaten well, I wouldn't have had a clean home, I wouldn have done the hoover no, I'm exaggerating, but really she was. She was a wonderful, wonderful support for me and also psychologically to be able to. Yeah, she believed in me more than I believed in myself.
Speaker 1:Um, and then, I would say, in the second part of my career, probably about seven years in, I really started to be able to career.
Speaker 1:Probably about seven years in I really started to be able to see myself after a performance and take the good things from it and I started to let go of things like maybe not having the most aesthetically pleasing feed and take my eyes away from that and see that I had something else to give from the point of view of the energy or the light on stage or the acting abilities and the artistic abilities, and to really immerse myself into a story, whether it was being in love or whether it was being rejected or killing someone on stage, to not care about looking good but to actually, um really, yeah, put everything into the role, which is really ideally what we should be able to do.
Speaker 1:Um, and sometimes the focus goes too much onto the form, which anyway happens in your first eight years of training and ideally, of course, there's always work to be done and that you never achieve the perfect aesthetic and form. Um, but hopefully, at one point within your career, you can let go of that perfectionism and really just focus on enjoying the roles and the artistic side of things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's worth mentioning that, as a dancer, you have a very particular challenge, which is you're essentially doing a sport but, unlike other sports, you have to make it look effortless. So you you might be dying inside, but to the audience you still have to look like it's the easiest thing. Yeah, how did you manage that?
Speaker 1:So just to touch on that, like, yes, from the point of view of the work and the energy we put in and the dedication to the body and the athleticism, it is like a sport, but different from a sport, and I think I struggled with this. Like there is no number one right, and that's something where you can't. It's not something you can win. It's and it's very much about an audience can come and watch two different shows and they can prefer one dancer over another dancer and really two different people can say I thought that was an amazing show and the other one will say that, and then they see the other person and they don't like the show at all. Right, so it's really a matter of opinion and this is what makes it so hard, because often directors choose their preferred dancers and it's really just their opinion. So your career is dependent on one person's opinion of you and, of course, not everybody can be a soloist or principal dancer. But there were so many dancers that technically or artistically I guess let's focus more technically were so much more capable than I was, and certainly today. I mean the competitive ballet, like the competition in the ballet world now. It's so so, so high.
Speaker 1:Maybe if I was coming into the ballet world today, I never would achieve, I wouldn't get to that principal position. I'd like to think I would, but because, again, there is the artistic side, which in the end, I think should override all um, but you can't do. I think. There's so many factors. You can't do one thing without the other thing. You need the package, you need the full package. So you need to be a good artist, you need to be technically capable up until a certain point, you need to have maybe the height. You might need to also, yeah, be a good partner. There's so many factors involved to become even a ballet dancer at all and then to be a soloist dancer or to be a principal dancer. Very few people come with everything and I think that's really, really difficult to find.
Speaker 2:Most people, I imagine, know that a ballet dancer spends a lot of time on stage. What does a work week look like, though? How do you prepare for those performances? How many hours a day do you spend preparing for those shows?
Speaker 1:often people think they come and see a ballet, and certainly if it's a more traditional ballet, a classical ballet, they think that it's all happy, smiling people being lifted, having a good time dancing around. And, of course, when we're on stage and we need to smile and we need to perform, the endorphins and things which are released give that impression. And it is maybe not for everybody, because if you're doing it for year after year after year, you get so used to repeating certain repertoire and you start to see the faces on stage which have done it a hundred times and they're actually a bit bored out, right, and that's when you get a glimpse into what is life behind the stage, if you, as an audience member, are aware of it and you see that maybe one or two people which aren't really in the moment on stage and have got to that point in their career where they're a bit well done, um. So what? What goes on behind the stage? Rehearsals, lots of rehearsals, rehearsal after rehearsal after rehearsal. Um.
Speaker 1:So london was, until 19 years old, moved to stuttgart, germany, 19 to 29, 10 years there, um, and then 2000, and what are we? 2015 august, I came to zurich and I spent seven and a half years with the company. We were working three floors underground.
Speaker 2:Underground, meaning no daylights.
Speaker 1:No daylights, no daylights. So a day starts with training in the morning, which is the idea is to warm you up for the day. Training doesn't have to be about pushing yourself, it doesn't have to be about it's not like training every day in the gym. It can just be about warming up your body and doing what you need for the day, and then we would have a 15 minute break, which is very short. When you have to go up three floors, change, have something to eat, come down three floors and then go straight in the studio.
Speaker 1:You really don't have much time for yourself. You know, if you were working the whole day in the theatre apart from the lunchtime, you wouldn't really have time for daylight. So for me, I always went out at lunchtime. I think it was very rare that I would eat in the canteen in the opera house, and that was really, even if it was a great day, that was really just to get outdoors, have some fresh air change, put on some normal clothes at some point in the day, feel like a normal person, for you know 45 minutes and then go back in the studio and, to be honest, this cannot be healthy for anyone.
Speaker 2:On top of all of that, you're in ballet studios that are basically the walls are covered with mirrors, right yeah so at least on two sides. Yeah, you're observing yourself a lot. What does that do to you mentally, when you're pursuing perfection and you're observing yourself all day? Did that affect you in any way?
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely yes, it did. I think the best thing you can do is, as quickly as possible, to observe yourself, learn to not look in the mirror and to trust the rehearsal director that's in front of you. I think that's you know as a dancer. That's really important to learn that early on. But when you're having those days where you just maybe things aren't working or you feel a bit insecure about yourself, it's very hard to do that and you go back to the mirror and that just makes it worse. If you don't like yourself before you enter in the ballet studio, if you are carrying, you know, maybe childhood issues about yourself or educational trauma, it's very hard if those things aren't addressed. And this is something that I think is really interesting, because actually I'm so grateful for ballet, speaking of mirrors, for holding up a mirror for me, because I think if it wasn't for being immersed into this, into this world of high discipline and, you know, perfectionism, wanting to be perfect, um, where really you know it's never achievable, I wouldn't have been confronted with myself as often as I was, um, and there were so many opportunities. I see. I see, all those moments where I would shut down and not feel good enough were opportunities for me to look at. It wasn't about the ballet, it was about something else, something deeper, and to learn to overcome that. I mean, if I didn't, I think so many people go through life not having this mirror where they have to be confronted with themselves. I would imagine, um, not many jobs do that for you and and really show you to yourself. Um, so, yeah, I could say it's about the ballet, but really it was. It was something deeper than that and about accepting myself and where I came from. Um, yeah, not feeling good enough, all of these things, and it would have been if I, if it was in another discipline, it would have shown up there as well.
Speaker 1:Ballet it's something that you have to apply yourself to at such an early age, 11 years old, every day and you at that point, you have no idea what are the things you're going to have to work through as an adult. You know what are the things from your parenting that you're going to need to address. So you're doing that at the same time as maintaining or trying to succeed in this very high demand, highly stressful, vulnerable industry, or where you're very vulnerable. In this industry, at 19 years old, we're still not fully developed, like our prefrontal cortex, is still developing until 25 years old, or certainly in guys. I think it's a bit earlier in women.
Speaker 1:Um, so, yeah, it's, there's a lot happening, you know, in those early years and 25. I became principal dancer at 25, 26, right. But those years between 19 to 26, I mean I'd have a good show and I'd have a show where I was like that was the worst show in the world because one pirouette didn't happen, right, yeah, it was a very um, I had a lot of ups and downs, a lot of ups and downs with myself to to be able to accept my, the package that I had as a dancer and so you start so young also with your career 25 principal dancer, at the same time 25 26 I think 25, 26 at the same time.
Speaker 2:You know you can't forever, but you're all in to the dance career. So how can you prepare for what's next after dance?
Speaker 1:I like this question. I like this question a lot because I think it's not spoken about enough in the dance community, enough in the dance community. Pretty much, after maybe a year of being a principal, I was already thinking, hmm, like if I stay here in Stuttgart forever, what am I going to do here? It's a German speaking country, it's not a very international city not many expats. I certainly couldn't do a job here in English. I don't want to end up being a rehearsal director, I don't want to be a choreographer, um, so I stayed another three, four years as a principal dancer in Stuttgart and then I would say you know, we would do 120 shows a year, maybe I was also.
Speaker 1:My world, every, everything, revolved around ballet. Right, it was. You know, the theater was like, it's like a second home. You go on tour with the company, you have no friends outside of the theater, um, and it's not I would. I don't say that it's like that everywhere, but it was like that for me in Stuttgart. So my whole world was about the theatre and I only socialised with people in the theatre.
Speaker 1:So I really, when I left at 29 years old, I really consciously looked for a place where I could see myself being allowed to continue my mastery as a performer, but also in a place where I would have a higher standard of living so Switzerland, you know, higher salaries and then also potentially see myself in a city where I could transition into something else, whatever that might be.
Speaker 1:I had no idea at the time, but whatever that might be, that might be. I had no idea at the time, but whatever that might be. So because of that I made the choice more on standard of living and the transitioning, what I would do afterwards, rather than going to another big classical company and furthering my career. And I would say it was a bit too early to do that at 29 years old. But this is where dancers are lacking the guidance right. Um, and I think we can, we could do better in the dance world to start advising dancers earlier as to ways they can open up their worlds, develop different communities outside of just the theatre. But I think for a lot of dancers it's really something that's present in their mind throughout their career.
Speaker 2:It certainly gave me a lot of anxiety.
Speaker 1:How old were you when you had to retire in this theatre? I was already out the door to say um, I was still performing very well and physically my body was intact, like I was very fortunate to have not have any serious injuries throughout my career. Um, so we had a conversation and I and I think also this is quite normal and typical um, when, when a house has a director that is also a choreographer, obviously and I struggle with this because I, my first director, was just a director and he wasn't a choreographer and so of course, he could influence decisions, maybe of choreographers coming in and casting for their pieces, but I think in most cases he would try to let the choreographer decide who they wanted in their piece and not push this was in.
Speaker 1:Stuttgart and I think when a house has a director as a choreographer, it makes it difficult to separate the two roles, because obviously a choreographer wants to have dancers in the company that they know well that they can work with, that suit their particular type of choreography right. But just because a dancer doesn't suit one type of choreography, it doesn't mean they're not a good dancer, but they would be less used or even let go just because they haven't worked with this one type of choreographer. So I think it's a risky thing to mix the two roles as a director and a choreographer, because they're two very different things. And to direct a company is is yeah, it's really one thing, and then to come and choreograph on a company is a very is something else. So of course, when a director comes in as a choreographer, they like to bring dancers with them that they know how they work and they know how the choreographer works.
Speaker 1:Um, and even then sometimes it's still a gamble and it goes wrong and dancers stay one year, which cannot allow these things to happen. But yeah, in this case it happened for me In some way. I agree, because I don't believe in holding on and I think it's always good to let go if something wants to go or if, then let it go. You know, um. So I didn't really um try to fight for my position there, and I also knew within myself. I knew what I wanted to do, so it was kind of easy. For me as well. It was an easy decision, but I probably would have stayed and danced a couple more years.
Speaker 2:If you could have.
Speaker 1:If I could have. Yes, yeah, because I really at this point. You started the whole podcast with a very grueling and demanding career and it is. But I think when you get to sort of your mid-30s and onwards, you get to a point of acceptance and you get to a point of just being able to really enjoy being on stage and that's the part that's important. Right, it's the studio work.
Speaker 1:Actually, I wouldn't say it became easy, but when you're doing it from 11 years old, training isn't hard anymore. It's almost like it's like your daily medicine. You go to the bar, you do your plies and your body becomes supple and you just get into the flow and it's like it's flow like. And it's still hard. And sometimes you do have to think and sometimes you have days again when you get frustrated with yourself. But you know you don't have to be frustrated with yourself anymore, right, because it's not that you can't do something, maybe it's just how early you got into the work that day in your frame of mind. So you learn, you really learn to accept yourself and you kind of you work out a formula for yourself as to what works and, um, so going on stage can really be.
Speaker 1:At that point you can. Really, it's really enjoyable, you know, um, yeah, and it's such a short career and there's not much time to be able to enjoy, actually that phase where I would say it kind of became easy and I could rely on my spontaneity. And I loved that because I would rather have that than have any one. Two shows being the same, you know, and seeing what comes out in the moment. Now, of course, when you're a younger artist, you want to rehearse each moment to the finest detail and then, of course, it's still going to be different on stage. But when it is different on stage, you might freak out about the fact that it's different on stage. But if you leave things open for freedom and for spontaneity in the studio, and then when it comes on stage, you are ready for that, because every show's live right. No two shows are ever, ever the same. So I think, uh, yeah, it's, it's really um interesting to see the development within yourself as you go through your career.
Speaker 2:Take me back to your last bow. What was going through your head? You hear the audience clapping. You know this, for now is your final show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting, good, good moment to bring up, because I think for so, for me, I really felt, I felt happy and excited and I didn't feel sad. Um, yeah, and I think that's for many reasons, I think I'm so grateful and I got to dance and, like I couldn't have imagined, you know, even at graduating from the Royal Ballet School and knowing like, yeah, let's not talk about 11 years old, when I really didn't feel good enough and shouldn't have been in that environment that I was, let's even talk about at the end of the Royal Ballet School, when all like all the training, the work, training, had happened, and you know, I graduated at what is one of the top two people in my class. And you know, even at that point, if you told me I was gonna have the career that I've had, I wouldn't, I should have believed it, but I wouldn't have believed it, right? Um, you know, I I pretty much got to dance nearly everything.
Speaker 1:Um, there's like two or three ballets that I have on, on one hand, that I can count that I would have liked to have done, but just weren't in the repertoire of the companies that I was in, and that's really it, it. You know, and I already had in mind what it was that I wanted to to do next. You know, in the end again everybody's replaceable, um, and that is a very difficult side about the career there is always someone waiting to go on stage that's happy for the opportunity. Somebody younger, not necessarily better, but will grow, you know, and develop themselves as an artist and bring something new to the stage. So, yeah, I think, when it's time, it's time, and you really know it and for me, I really knew it.
Speaker 2:I feel like we could keep talking for hours and hours and we would still have so much more to talk about. But perhaps I will ask two last questions let's go the first one being for people who don't know anything about ballet. When you've met these people and you had to introduce yourself and tell them what you do, what have been some of the most common misconceptions that they had about this career?
Speaker 1:a lot of people still think that guys wear pointe shoes. Like, and guys do wear point shoes, right, but it tends to be more in the like. There's a company called ballet to trocadero, where it's an all-guy company and there's the prince as the guy and the female role as the guy as well, and they'll wear tutus and point shoes and but that's more. It can be and it can also happen in other environments as well. But in the traditional setting guys don't wear pointe shoes. Their role is more to partner the girl in her pointe shoes, um lift, and then they might do the more virtuoso work, or I mean, everybody jumps, everybody turns, you know, um, but yeah, traditionally guys do not wear pointe shoes and I'm always surprised that people still think that guys might wear pointe shoes or toe shoes. They call them in the states, um, misconceptions, what other misconceptions? That everybody might have an eating disorder. I'm always defending that side of things and yes, there are cases where the environment brings out eating disorder tendencies, but it's not because of the career. The career is just the trigger, right, and um, I actually I work at the, I work at a clinic now these days on an assignment basis and I recently actually had a client with a severe eating disorder, and I won't talk about it much more than that. But this person was also in a very highly disciplined and exposing industry, like it was an art form. It was more athletic ice skating, you know. And yeah, it's, it's. It's not the industry itself which brings out these sites to people. It can be parenting, codependency, I don't know. Um, it could could also be genetic. The science behind eating disorders is not really clear as to where and why it happens, but as a ballet dancer, you need so much energy. You need to eat healthily. A lot of us do smoke and drink and use even recreational drugs, and that is part of the escapism as well, that an artist can afford themselves, which is different to an athlete. I don't know if it will always be like that. Hopefully it will, because I really do think it's an industry that you need to in some way find an outlet, and of course, it shouldn't be through smoking or drinking. But and and that's also why I advise that any dancer that you know is in company life. They have their hobbies, they keep hold of friends outside of the ballet world where they can have normal conversations with um. And if you don't have any hobbies. Start a hobby.
Speaker 1:Try to ask your parents who you were before you were three years old. Did you like to be outdoors, did you like to I don't know play games? Did you speak a lot or were you a quiet child? Find out who you were before society started to have influences on you and push you in a certain direction. Because, yeah, the ballet world is certainly something that somebody puts us into and we kind of just go along with it because of the training. We don't, as kids, take the time or have the ability to think of anything else, right, but yeah, that everybody has an eating disorder. That's also one that really, um, often surprises me, because I think, if they actually see the power and the strength that's needed for dancers to function and do these three hour performances, you see the spray spraying off, um, from from the male dancer and also from the female dancer. Yeah, it's like you can't do this job without taking care of yourself by spray you mean sweat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, by spray you mean sweat, and if you don't take care of yourself, it will show up Eventually. It will show up whether it's through injury, whether it's through burnout, yeah, it will show up. Whether it's through injury, whether it's through burnout, yeah, it will show up. It will show up also in your relationships.
Speaker 2:If you're overly tired, you'll be more reactive and frustrated. And yeah, you already gave great advice for dancers. If you could distill your journey so far into one life lesson that is applicable to not just dancers, but everyone who's listening right now, what would that be?
Speaker 1:My advice for everybody would be find a way to use your body in some way, in some form, in some way in some form. For me to have used my body through my whole career, um, through, you know, the art form of dance makes it so much easier for me to connect with people and communicate with people. And I'm not saying that everybody has to go out and take dance classes certainly not ballet classes, please don't but it can be in the form of, I don't know, a martial arts. It can be, but a martial art is also or many martial arts are also some form of dance and discipline and respect, and, you know, respect for other people's space and body awareness, or it could be, you know, even on on a tennis court, there's still this respect of distance right and you're sort of dancing with each other. So find a way to use your body.
Speaker 1:Uh, because I know that it translates through everything I do, even in the supermarket, when I go shopping with the trolley and I'm going around the aisles and how I take the turns and how I slide to the next item of food that I need, like, uh, dance turns up. Or my how I use my body turns up in everything that I do, um, and I think it also communicates to us when we feel good, when we feel bad, if we feel anxious. And it's funny because, as a dancer, I thought I was really connected with my body, um, but it was only later, when I would feel certain tension in a certain place that wasn't related to workout or to to ballet, um, or to muscle use, that I could actually start to listen to my body differently and understand when it was telling me that something wasn't matching up in a certain relationship or in a friendship, or with my boss, yeah, Alex, thank you so, so much for taking the time to be here to share your insights, your story.
Speaker 2:It's been such a pleasure, Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much, it's been a real pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider liking, commenting and subscribing.